Step Into My Thimble

Yesterday, another glorious day both because of weather and because Wednesday is my day off, Maeve and I went with some friends to the zoo, and then after naptime she got her first haircut.

Before on top, with mullet in the back and fountain in the front. Bottom, the finished look, an attempt at a bob. A better view of the cut is here, but those Flickr mosaics are lots of fun to make.

In case you are not following my Flickr photos, here’s the second Amy Butler skirt. It turned out just as nicely as the first.

The winner of my little music quiz, by the way, was Molly. If you’re out there, send me your mailing address!

I wish that all the owners of the blogs I subscribe to would go into their administrative settings and choose to RSS full posts rather than excerpts, and also to include images if that’s an option.

I bet some of you didn’t even know that was possible! Go check it out and make your blog more friendly for RSS readers RIGHT NOW!!!

Thanks.

More later: And thanks to Marie for pointing out that she gets excerpts from my site.

I looked in my WordPress settings (Settings/Reading) and found that I had already selected full posts:

A while ago I used Feedburner so maybe that old feed is sticking around, I don’t know. Or maybe the excerpt is a result of the reader you use. I myself am a Google Reader user these days.

Anyway, the built in WordPress feeds I have are as follows:

http://www.stepintomythimble.com/wordpress/?feed=rss2

http://www.stepintomythimble.com/wordpress/?feed=rss

http://www.stepintomythimble.com/wordpress/?feed=atom

From yesterday’s birthday fun in the backyard.

Maeve is really into singing all the time now, although often with her own made up lyrics. Can you guess what song this post’s title sort of comes from? If so, I’ll mail you a kit of toddler entertainment goodness!

Edited to add: Over the weekend I’ll have Maeve pick a winner from the people who answer correctly in the comments.

Never mind the crappy facial expression: I knit something for myself lately!

The yarn is Briar Rose Fibers, a limited edition Michigan Corriedale wool. I love the colorway. I spent forever trying to find a perfect vest pattern for it, and I never did. So one day I just started knitting a big old 4×4 ribbed tube. When I got to the bustline, that’s when the spring Interweave Knits showed up, and I decided to use some ideas from Bonne Marie‘s Aleita Shell. I like that overlapping front.

Today is the first day this vest has been out in public. I still don’t know if I’ll keep it as is, or frog it in favor of something with buttons down the front. Either way I still love the colors and the quality of the wool.

Everyone’s turning two these days. It’s the cool thing to do! At our house we’re having the extended birthday celebrations like Little Sir just did. No felt letters were made en masse, but we do have quite a few paper ice cream cones taped up in the windows (“two scoops” being this year’s theme). The first party was Saturday with the family (and the ridiculous cake was great), and the second will be this weekend with all our toddler friends. Two is such a cute age.

Someone’s turning two on the 16th. That bottom right face is the best of the set.

I finished my Amy Butler skirt, the one from the tablecloth, last week.

It is so great that I made another one this week. The second one is made out of a Hoffman hand-dyed in what I’d call “dirty pink,” with hints of blue, brown, and yellow. The hand-dyes are hard to describe, and this is the closest I could find online. It’s definitely not a patterned batik print, but it’s not tie-dye either. We need a sunny day, when I don’t have to work, and then there will be pictures.

The second skirt is the layered version with the little frayed overlapping sections. I wanted to try one out of a fabric that would result in subtle frays, so I picked a dyed cloth rather than a printed one. Next time I make it, I might try this Kaffe Fassett print though–maybe the little white threads would be an interesting contrast on such a crazy fabric.

One thing is for sure, the linen from the tablecloth was a lot more forgiving to work with than the high threadcount hand-dyed cotton. I used Liana‘s method of installing the invisible zipper with the regular machine foot, which went fine, except with the second skirt, I put it in backwards the first time. Oops. It was tricky taking it out without leaving a bunch of track marks from the first seams.

And in the Technical Department, I upgraded to WP2.5 a while ago and then never have used it until today. I have read lots of complaints but I actually think it’s pretty nice so far. I have yet to get into tagging on this blog though. Anybody want to tell me why I should start now, or if I have to go back through all 650+ posts and retro-tag? Should I give up on categories? This new WP, and being able to upload video on Flickr among other advancements there… Like Mark Mothersbaugh says when drawing the dog on Yo Gabba Gabba, things are out of control!